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D'Aubuisson was born to Roberto d'Aubuisson Andrade, a salesman of French roots, and Joaquina Arrieta Alvarado, a career civil servant, in Santa Tecla, La Libertad Department, El Salvador, graduating from the national military academy in 1963. He was part of La Tandona, the class of 1966 at the Escuela Militar. In 1972, he was trained in communications at the School of the Americas, a United States Department of Defense Institute that provides military training to government personnel in US-allied Latin American nations. After completing his studies at the Institute, he subsequently became a member of the Salvadoran military intelligence.[7][8]

D'Aubuisson involved himself in death squad activity while in the military, and he became associated with the second death squad to emerge in El Salvador in the mid–1970s, called the White Warriors Union. In October 1979, after a group of progressive officers deposed the government of Carlos Humberto Romero in a coup d'état and established the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG, 1979–1982), D'Aubuisson was forced out of military service for his death squad connections, although he continued working for senior military commanders secretly. D'Aubuisson was regularly featured on Salvadoran television denouncing alleged traitors and Communists, who were then murdered shortly afterwards by death squads.[9]

On May 7, 1980, six weeks after the assassination of Saint Óscar Romero, D'Aubuisson and a group of civilians and soldiers were arrested on a farm. The raiders found weapons and documents identifying D'Aubuisson and the civilians as death squad organizers and financiers, and of planning a coup d'état to depose the JRG.[10] D'Aubuisson was soon released from prison, after 8 of the 14 military garrison commanders voted for his release, overruling the JRG.[11]

His opposition to the JRG gave him international infamy. In August 1981, The Washington Post reported that D'Aubuisson "openly talked of the need to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people to restore peace to El Salvador". Shortly afterwards, on September 30, he founded ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance), an extreme right-wing political party. D'Aubuisson accumulated much political capital among Salvadorans for his anti-leftist stridency and for his reputation as an effective counter-insurgency strategist. He often accused the JRG of being a Marxist threat to El Salvador.[12]

Despite alleged electoral fraud and political violence, the March 28, 1982 Salvadoran legislative election of a Constituent Assembly was an ARENA victory, gaining them 19 of 60 seats and their allies 17 seats. D'Aubuisson's people were thus the majority, who then elected Álvaro Magaña as interim-president of El Salvador. D'Aubuisson became President of the Constituent Assembly. The JRG's government ended in May.[13][14][15]

On March 25, 1984, D'Aubuisson campaigned for the Salvadoran presidency. On May 2, 1984, he lost the presidency to José Napoleón Duarte of the Christian Democratic Party, receiving 46.4% of the vote to Duarte's 53.6%. D'Aubuisson claimed fraud and U.S. interference on behalf of Duarte, who was later confirmed to have been a CIA asset.

After the Salvadoran civil war, the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that D'Aubuisson "gave the order to assassinate the Archbishop" to military officers who also tried to kill judge Atilio Ramírez Amaya "to deter investigation of the case".[17][18][19] Views of him among contemporary Salvadorans are mixed and often drawn across party lines; ARENA supporters revere him for his right-wing beliefs and steadfast opposition to communism, while FMLN supporters vilify him for his alleged human rights atrocities and probable involvement in Archbishop Romero's assassination. On January 20, 2007, President Antonio Saca of the ARENA party celebrated the anniversary of D'Aubuisson's death, promising "to continue the ARENA party, based upon his ideologic legacy." Amid opposition debate, ARENA tried to name D'Aubuisson a "meritorious son of El Salvador", a national honor, but failed due to the efforts of protesting Church leaders and human rights workers.[20] He was known as "Chele" (light-skinned face) and was alleged to have been a leader of anti-communist death squads that were alleged to have tortured and killed thousands of civilians before and during the Salvadoran Civil War. To political prisoners he was known as "Blowtorch Bob", due to his frequent use of a blowtorch in interrogation sessions.[17][21][22]

In 1986, ex-US ambassador Robert White reported to the United States Congress that "there was sufficient evidence" to convict D'Aubuisson of planning and ordering Archbishop Romero's assassination, describing D'Aubuisson as a pathological killer, as early as his 1984 Salvadoran presidential run.[10] In April 2010, Alvaro Saravia, a former army captain who had admitted taking part in Romero's murder, testified in an interview with the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro that D'Aubuisson had given the order to proceed with the killing of the Archbishop.[23]

In February 2007, D'Aubuisson's son Eduardo, along with two ARENA politicians and their driver, were killed in Guatemala. Investigators suggested that the murders may have been connected to drug-trafficking groups.[20][24] In March 2015, D’Aubuisson’s surviving son, Roberto D’Aubuisson Jr., was elected mayor of Santa Tecla, a neighboring municipality of the capital San Salvador.[25]

^Wayne Partridge. "The School of the Americas: leadership or terrorist training?: jailed Ky. nun to be among protesters at annual rally Sunday", Lexington Herald-Leader (KY), 20 November 1999, 1A: "But the school can hardly be blamed for the misdeeds of its graduates, supporters say. D'Aubuisson, for example, attended only a six-week radio maintenance and repair course at the school."